The Scottish Play Murder (A Restoration Mystery)

by Rutherford, Anne

  So Larchford did have a ship that was well known to be his. Very telling that his wife had not suspected this thing which appeared to be common knowledge to the rest of the world. The ship was, as the ship’s officer had said, rather squat and did appear somewhat toad-like with her sails furled and her aft end wide, the ship floating high with an empty hold and bobbing on top of the river’s surface. But even from here she seemed nearly prickly with guns peeking over the gunwale. Suzanne gathered from the officer’s comments that Maiden was a Dutch prize taken in the war King Charles was waging against that country. A perfectly legitimate possession of the earl’s, except for the uses to which it had been put.

  She walked down the dock toward the thing. It seemed essentially no different from any other ship in sight, except that it appeared deserted. Its gangway was out, as if inviting company, but nobody was using it. She saw no men in the rigging, nor did there appear to be anyone on deck. At the bottom of the gangway she stopped and looked up. There appeared nothing to find here. A ship that could not talk would have no answers.

  Maybe it couldn’t talk. What might she find up there, if she dared board her? Nothing, perhaps. What would she learn if she didn’t? Nothing, certainly. She took one step onto the gangway, and nothing bad happened to her. Another step, and nobody came to shout at her she should go away. The ship shifted in the river, and she planted one foot to the side to ride the rise and fall of the plank beneath her feet. Once the gangway was still, another step forward and she was committed. She walked the rest of the way up to the ship’s gunwale, then stepped onto the deck. She slipped a little in a patch of slick ice, but regained herself and found a dry spot to stand.

  It was smaller than she’d imagined. Ships to her had always seemed in her imagination to be enormous structures that could hold limitless amounts of cargo, men, guns, and provisions. But this seemed no larger than a small cottage. Cannon dominated the deck, and Suzanne counted ten rather large guns of dark bronze: four along each gunwale, one at the bow pointed forward, and one at the aft near the rudder helm, a long wooden arm atop a heavy shaft emerging from the depths of the ship.

  The guns did seem unnecessarily large, their presence overwhelming the deck. Each was a huge bronze barrel set upon a heavy wooden carriage with small wheels. They appeared newer than the ship itself. The carriages were not as sea-worn as the decks on which they rested. Neither were the boxes containing the cannonballs for those guns. Each was well stocked with large iron balls, some beginning to rust in the damp air. The ship’s officer had certainly been right, this ship was inordinately well armed.

  The deck tilted slightly in a surge of the river, and she set her feet again for balance so she wouldn’t stagger. Ropes of the rigging overhead whapped and tapped against mast and yardarms.

  “Hello?” She almost hoped nobody was there. Though someone to answer questions might be helpful, she wondered if anyone she might find would be truthful. Being able to search the ship without interference might be more helpful. Such evidence would at least be more honest. Carefully she stepped toward a hatch that appeared to lead belowdecks, and peered down into it.

  Utter darkness. The sunlight from above shone in a small patch against a bulkhead below, and beyond that was all black. She looked around for something that might help her see, and found a torch poked into a sconce on deck. No help to her without something with which to light it, but she found flint and striker in a box near the helm. It took several tries to make it light in this cold, but once it was burning she returned to the hatch for a look.

  A ladder descended into the darkness. The torch didn’t reveal much from here, but it mitigated the black and turned it into shifting, flickering shadows. It was a hold she saw, empty except for three small barrels standing in the middle. Just then she could have stood a good, stiff drink to warm herself. Scottish whisky? By all accounts there had been whisky for Santiago to sell to Ramsay, but here in the hold was a dim scent of rum, lurking beneath smells of seawater and rotting things.

  Suzanne straightened and turned toward a door that stood ajar at the rear of the deck. As she carefully picked her way across a rope-and-canvas-strewn deck, she held her torch aloft and took care not to set any of the ship on fire. The door creaked as she opened it. She entered with the torch before her.

  Inside the passage, off to the side, a ladder led downward to the left. Suzanne could smell the galley, a distant odor of burnt meat and wood ashes, and knew someone had recently cooked something there. The warmth as she approached and passed it told her the fire was still lit. Perhaps someone was tending it. Perhaps not, but she stopped to listen, for surely someone was still on the ship. She steeled herself, and decided that if there were, she wanted to find him. A member of the ship’s crew might have the very information she needed to determine why Angus had been killed and who had done the same to Larchford. She headed to the rear of the ship, where the captain’s quarters would be situated. Surely anyone occupying a boat with everyone else gone would be sleeping in the captain’s quarters, given that the captain of this ship was dead and unlikely to object.

  Her torchlight wavered as she moved, and in the flickering light she found a door that bore the word “Kapitein” on a carved wooden plaque. She gave it a slight shove, and it squeaked horribly. One more short squeak, and it slammed shut in her face. Startled, she stepped back. The door opened again, just enough to let through the muzzle of a pistol. It aimed directly at her nose.

  “Get the bloody hell out of here, or I’ll blow yer brains out!”

  Though Suzanne couldn’t help but take one more step backward, she said in a voice she couldn’t keep from shaking with terror, “I’m sorry. I’m looking for someone who can tell me something about this ship.”

  The gun barrel retreated into the room, and the door opened a little wider to accommodate a man’s face. He was bearded, by about two weeks, and shaggy all around. He had no wig, though he needed one for the sake of a hairline that had receded halfway to the back of his soot-smeared head. He made up for the lack of hair with the extraordinary length of what was left, which stuck out in several directions for a great lot of grease and sleeping in it. She thought it might ordinarily have been combed out and tied back, even as greasy as it was, but she’d awakened him and caught him before his morning toilet. Though it was well past noon, she knew that meant nothing to most people. Most people who could sleep through the day, did so. Particularly people who drank as much as this man smelled like he did. The whiff of rum that rolled out on his breath made her eyes water.

  “What do ye want from me?” He looked her up and down, and appeared to like what he saw. The familiar light of interest glinted in his eyes, and she knew she would have what she wanted from him if she played her game right. And she was terribly skilled at this particular game.

  She thought she’d already answered his question, but patiently she replied as if she hadn’t. “I wish to learn something about this ship.”

  “Such as?”

  “May I come in?” She reached out to urge the door open, and her fingertips accidentally-on-purpose touched his hand where he held it.

  He peered at her with a bleary eye shot red with too much alcohol and too little food, and that glint. He was thinking, figuring what he might get in exchange for telling what he knew. She had seen that sort of light far too many times and knew it meant trouble. Usually it meant she wasn’t going to be paid, but she could see this man’s faculties were impaired. She’d seen ones like this before, and knew how to deal with them. “May I?” she repeated, and gestured inside as she leaned slowly toward him.

  “Of course.” He stepped back from the door and opened it. Having decided what he wanted from her, he presented himself as a gentleman. A parody at best. He gestured clumsily for her to enter, then shut the door behind her. “Here,” he said, “toss that great huge thing out.” He gestured to an open window. The sun coming through it made the large torch unnecessary. “It’ll catch the overhead, the ship’ll go up
in flames in a trice, and won’t that be just jolly good.” Suzanne glanced around for a sconce, but in this room there were only candlesticks filled with unlit candles. So she went to the window and dropped the torch into the river at the rear of the ship. It plopped in with an abbreviated hiss far below.

  The sailor—he was dressed as an ordinary seaman and not an officer—busied himself pouring rum from a jug to a fine crystal glass that sat on a table nearby. He wore a filthy, striped shirt belted with thick leather, calf-length breeches of coarse linen, and a kerchief knotted at his neck. There were no shoes on his feet at the moment, but a pair of plain leather ones lay on the floor next to the wide, luxurious captain’s bed. The feather mattress inside the box was piled with silken coverlet and linen sheets, which were wadded up and stained with food and drink. The sight rather turned her stomach, and reminded her of the filthy, slatternly women in the whorehouse where she’d once earned her keep. It was not a fond memory. She turned her back on it and addressed the sailor.

  “You’re a member of this ship’s crew?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Nobody, really. I only ask by way of striking up conversation. If we’re going to talk, we should begin somewhere. But to reply to your real question, which I expect is who am I, my name is Suzanne Thornton. I’m from Southwark, and I am hoping to find out details about what happened to the captain of this ship.”

  “Santiago?”

  “Then you do belong to this ship.” And she was pleased to have confirmed that this was the ship Santiago had captained.

  “Santiago were a right bastard, he were. Why do you give a rusty fuck what happened to him? I don’t, and he were my employer and meal ticket. I gots no place to go since him and Larchford both were kilt.”

  Suzanne looked around the filthy room. A tin plate with bits of sausage and crumbs of biscuit sat on the table next to the jug. “You appear to have settled in quite comfortably.”

  He shrugged and plopped himself down on a chair next to the table. He took a large gulp of the rum as if to demonstrate the truth of her statement. “Well, when Larchford got his head stove in, and that after our captain was gutted, we of the crew realized we needed to find employment elsewhere. So we each took off to petition other ships. But with the king not paying his navy, there’s hundreds of sailors set adrift here in London and not enough merchant ships paying real wages to take us on. So I comes back here, knowing there’s provisions and a place to sleep until someone realizes Larchford left behind this ship and they comes to get it.”

  “You knew his wife didn’t know he owned a ship?”

  The sailor snorted a laugh. “Womens know naught, ever. Most especially they don’t know if they husband is running a pirate ship. I vow, I’m dead surprised you found it. How did you know this were his bloody lordship’s property?”

  Suzanne wasn’t about to give him that information, so she answered a question he hadn’t asked. “I want to find out who murdered Santiago and the earl.”

  “And that musician fellow.”

  Suzanne blinked, surprised. “You know about Angus, then?”

  The sailor nodded. “He were a right idiot, that one. He and Santiago both was just a-begging to be done in.”

  “How was Angus involved?”

  “He were a fence, is all. He knowed where to sell things and nobody would be asking no close questions. Even better, he were a fence in London, where it takes skill to disguise a ship’s booty.”

  “For a man with such valuable skills, he certainly wasn’t making his fortune at it.” Suzanne had never known Angus to have an abundance of cash. He was ever as short of money as Big Willie or any of his other musician friends, and if he was spending ill-gotten gain he had very little to show for it.

  “Right. None of us has been rolling in riches for all the swag this scow has taken. I can’t say as any of us was p’tic’larly grief-stricken when we heard the earl were dead. That Scot nearly always took his portion in whisky. Sometimes rum, since Santiago weren’t always awash with whisky.”

  “What about you? Where were you the night Larchford was killed?”

  A shadow crossed the man’s eyes. After a moment, in which Suzanne could nearly hear the sarcasm gear clank into place in his head, he said, “I were right behind him, I were. I wielded the knife, don’t you know. I got ’er right here.” From his belt he drew a dagger and showed it to Suzanne. “Oh. But the earl met his end by a club, is what I heard. I hear the Irish have a thing called a shillelagh. Made from a tree branch, and the head is a bit of the trunk. A deadly thing, swung right.”

  Suzanne frowned, trying to think of what Irishman might be involved. “You think someone from Ireland killed Larchford with a shillelagh?”

  “No. I’m just sayin’.” Then the sailor burst out in raucous laughter. “Had ye there for a minute, didn’t I? You thought I killed Larchford, eh? Well, I can tell ye not to worry about me on that account, for I were in the gaol that day, and for three days before. ’Twere in the St. Martin’s Roundhouse, and you can check with them to see if I’m lyin’.”

  Suzanne stifled a sigh, and glanced toward the door. Maybe it was getting time to leave. The more this fellow drank, the less helpful he was and the more likely he would be to want her to give up something for the information. He took another deep draught of the rum, belched, and returned his attention to her. She turned back toward him as well. “So, what’s your interest in all this killin’?” he said.

  “Angus was a friend.”

  “And you’re a-looking for the one as sent him to hell?”

  Suzanne nodded, and let him believe that was her interest. “He was one of the musicians I often hire for my theatre. I run a troupe that plays in the Globe. Angus was part of a small group who plays for us regularly.”

  “He play pipes for ye?”

  “Drum, more often. The tabor better lends itself to the sorts of plays we perform than does the bagpipe. Sometimes he’ll play the small pipes for us, but usually it’s percussion, along with the others who play fiddle, flute, and lute.

  The sailor nodded as if he knew all about the lot of them. “Aye. Big Willie, Angus, Warren, and Tucker. They all’s got in on the sellin’ of Maiden’s booty. They’s all friends of Santiago for a long time. The cap’n got friends from here to Africa, to Jamaica and back again. That’s how he come to know Larchford. A friend of a friend of a friend, ’f you know what I mean.”

  “How did Larchford come to do business with Santiago? I wouldn’t have guessed they moved in similar circles.”

  The sailor leaned back and grew expansive as he realized he had a story to tell. “Oh, aye, I knows all about that. It were an importer from France as put them together. I were a-working on a ship owned by him. His name were . . . wait a minute, let me think. Jacques, something. In any case, I were swabbing decks on that French ship and ferrying across the channel ever so often with it. It were a good living, not too dangerous, and I didn’t have to wait to be paid most times. And then one day I seen this gold-crusted fop come aboard. I vow, I never seen a man so decked out with finery! And so proud, you might have thought he were the king himself! Every man on board was a-starin’ and goggling at him.”

  “Larchford had a certain style.”

  The sailor laughed. “He did. So, in any case, Santiago was a one as did a great deal of business with that Jacques fellow. We’d seen him over in France quite a bit, and I was taken aback some to see him here in London.”

  “This is where Larchford met Santiago? Here in London?”

  “Right here on this pier. He came on board the French boat, and so did Santiago. There were a great lot of greeting and hail fellow-ing, and then they took a stroll to the bow and had something of a parlay away from prying ears. They talked for a terrible long time, then they went belowdecks for a bit. I got on with my work, and forgot all about Santiago and the other until me and some other blokes was called to assemble at the mast. Ten of us, I think there was, ones who wasn’t the capta
in’s favorites, if you know what I mean. We was told that if we liked we could leave our place and go to work on another ship under authority of that Santiago fellow.”

  “So you went?”

  “Not a great lot of choice for that. If a captain wants a man gone, he’s just as likely to throw him overboard at some point as anything. He were doing me a favor to allow me to leave before he found an excuse to force me off. So I went. We all went.”

  “To Maiden.” Suzanne turned her face to indicate the ship all around her.

  He nodded. “This here’s a scow, but I vow she’s unsinkable. Santiago hired a crew that could man guns like Robin Hood with a bow. As ugly as this whore is, she is a terror on the high seas. She’s got a common look and her unremarkable profile makes her nearly a ghost in an ocean of famous ships. Though she’s got English papers, and Santiago could produce them on demand, she’s also got other papers he’s finagled or forged. French, English, and Dutch navy uniforms, and flags from every country you might think of which has ships at sea. They’s no identifiers on her. Go look. No name painted anywhere, no figurehead, no colors which ain’t also on a hundred other captured Dutch ships.”

  “So Larchford bought this ship and outfitted it to engage in piracy?”

  The sailor nodded. “Right under the king’s nose. And Larchford being who he is . . . I mean, was . . . I mean, since he was so well connected and all, he would have information about who was running what routes and what they might be carrying, and sometimes he knew where the king’s ships were a-going in search of the enemy.”

  “Scientia potentia est.”

  “Huh?”

  “Knowledge is power.”

  The sailor nodded. “Oh, aye! See-ent . . . that thing you said.”

  “So there were messengers hurrying every which way, it would seem?”